Eternity Now
by Darcey OBrien
Summary: Barnabas follows Josette to Widow's Hill - but events take a different turn this time. Canon divergence. Originally published in the print fanzine "Dark Fires" in 1980.


The hollow cannonading of the surf far below almost drowned out her choked words.

"Please! I'd die before I'd let that happen!"

Barnabas took an anxious step forward, then stopped himself with effort. The panicky, desperate look in her eyes would be fatal, he could tell. She twitched nervously, never still. To move and startle her now….. No.

He slowly spread his hands, letting the cane slip through his fingers and drop to the sandy ground. He held his hands steady, welcoming her trust.

"Josette." He forced his voice to keep calm. "I will not hurt you. How can I hurt one I love so - more than life itself?" That last was so true...

"But-" Her expression contorted as she struggled to understand. "But Angelique said - she showed me—"

She broke off, totally confused by that hideous mirror-image behind her and this man she loved before her.

Barnabas fought back a flicker of fear at Angelique's name. _I will defeat her curse in this._

"Angelique is not here, love," he soothed. "I am. With all the love I have always had for you. No matter what Angelique claims, Josette, I will not harm you. Have I ever? How can you tell me to stay away?"

Her hands, clenched in tight fists, jerked at her sides as she listened. There was _no_ monster here, only the man she had met in Martinique those sunswept months ago; the man she had come here to call husband. Regardless of what had happened before or since. In Martinique, she had loved him from the moment she first saw him. She would love him until the last moment she saw him. Which would not be now

He sensed her decision almost before she made it. Her body relaxed, the tension slowly draining away. Absently, her hand curved up to graze against the side of her neck. Barnabas started. Her fingers were brushing the point of his kiss.

"Barnabas?" There was a clear, childlike ring to her voice. "I want- I will- I-?"

"Here." Now he took the steps to her side, his arms slipping around her waist. He felt her spasm again, beginning to turn, seeking the counterbalance of whatever ghastly image Angelique had thrown at her.

 _I can not lose her. I_ _will_ _not._

He pulled her back, still smiling at her with his very being.

"Here. Love." He spoke the works in a hoarse whisper that exposed his heart. He leaned toward her.

His last sight was her face as his cheek, dipping , slid past hers. Her skin was death already in color, but her eyes were brilliant, alive sparks. As his lips touched the mark on her throat, she gave in, tilting her head to the side, revealing the pulsing dots. Her cape fell unnoticed behind her, her loose, wind-whipped hair splashing against his arms. He drew a breath full of her scent, and took her.

Did love ever have such a distinct feeling as this? It had always exploded in a tumultuous frenzy of joy in her heart to feel his kiss and caress. But this?

Here was no wild, delirious happiness. This was... more subtle... yet more overpowering... more complete… more final...

Why such an absolute, ultimate sensation? she puzzled vaguely. Why an awareness of 1oss-? Losing- what? How can I lose something I freely give to Barnabas? What? My heart is his already. My love is his already. My future is his already. What more can I offer willingly?

My life...

...and he takes it.

Her blood, warm on his lips and clogging his throat . Her light, shallow breaths fluttering in his ear as he drank . Her body falling back against his arms, sagging as the crimson support within seeped away. Her head, limply falling upon his arm, its weight heavily pulling on his shoulder. Her heart pattering steadily. then faltering, catching, questioning, stumbling again, fading. Her rapid breaths also flickering, struggling, surrendering

She was gone.

She was his.

She was eternal.

He lifted his head slowly, taking the full drag of her weight in his arms. He gazeddown at her, no longer tasting the wet scarlet life that still shone weakly at the points on her neck. She had made no sound; not responded at all. Only surrendered everything to him.

With effort, he drew his eyes away from the soft peace on her face. He sucked in a sigh that brushed against the cold dampness on his lips. He wanted to gently ease her down to the ground but, at the same time, he wanted to cling to her even in this brief death that was but a path between worlds, between levels of existence.

How calmly he could consider it now! He had thrashed and suffered and nightmared through his own crossover. Because he had not understood it - not wanted it - not accepted it.

She had. And for her the transition would be short, peaceful, simple.

If only I had known it could be like this! But no one controlled for me. No one explained it, offered it fairly. No one but a frothing bat leaping at me from the snarled words of a curse. And it did not care. It only ravaged.

A sensation jarred against him and he looked up. His view was what hers had been before she had spun toward his approach. He faced out over the cliff's drop to the thick night merging with the black sea. He wondered just what she had seen there - and now, suddenly, he saw it too.

The death-figure. Swirling in the flurry of hell's winds, eyes gaping blankly, mouth fallen open over the streak of dried blood, skin the green-white of the long-dead

No wonder it had terrified her! To come willingly to him now proved the power of her full love-if he had ever doubted it.

He bent to focus on her once more, but something again jolted his attention back to the night horizon. The vision there was undulating, misting, melting into another form, other features. He steeled himself, tensing warily.

It became Angelique.

As beautiful as he remembered her from those shuddering nights in Martinique. And her eyes as fiercely possessive and vindictive as he remembered when she spat out the curse. Angelique.

He could not resist flaring defiantly. "She is mine, Angelique! Mine to live through all eternity! Your curse has claimed another. Now my love is cursed too!"

The image smoldered, waves of heat causing it to waver as it hung over the sea. She was poised, gathering her enormous strength to counter him. At last her bitter words curled across the distance.

"Perhaps, Barnabas. For now. But your eternity will not last forever. Soon you will be pulled into another time, another life. You will leave her behind, but you will not forget her. And you will lose her to me. For her fate will be mine to seal in another time. Mine."

The cold rage in her voice snapped at him. He railed bravely. "So you say! But I have her now!"

The image again floated in ripples of energy, then slowly dissipated. Sparkling, it drifted into grey ash that was caught on the storm-wind and scattered over the sea. Her words lingered, chilling the air.

Barnabas glanced down at the still body resting in his arms. He could not believe in Angelique's threat. Josette was here, completely, just as he was now, cursed too. In her own way, Angelique had made eternity possible.

And I will not give her up. She is mine.

 _Josette_ _is_ _mine._

He did not realize he was gripping her body possessively. Desperately.

She opened her eyes, sensing she should somehow be amazed at the ability. But why? Opening her eyes was natural, a thing done all her life, every time she awakened. And she was stirring now, from a deep, clutching sleep, deeper than she had known before.

Though her eyes were open, it was still dark. Then the blackness cleared, and she saw stars glittering coldly above, faint streaks of storm-tossed cloud smudging their hard gleam. She turned her eyes and saw him.

And she saw more of him. It was her love, all right, but a change had come in him...

 _No. In me._

"Barnabas?" Evenher voice sounded far away, as if still caught in that clinging sleep.

"Come with me forever, Josette."

His eyes were like the icy sparks of stars. She took his offered hand, found it was as cold as the grave, yet knew her own skin was frosted death as well. She walked beside him, sensing where to put her feet on the rough cliff-edge.

Her mind seemed to float free of any existence she had ever known, for now she rea1ized she had left a previous existence, left it so abruptly and totally she had no recollection of it at all. Only a rustling memory that she had met him in that earlier life, to love him now. That lovewas no memory. It was here. It was real.

Without truly seeing it, she knew a carriage had stopped in the thick cloak of trees ahead. She knew a horse stood in the traces, its held flung up as it restlessly sniffed something inhuman and unnatural. She also knew a man had had stepped down from the carriage, approaching the horse in irritation, oblivious to the presence of any other.

His pulse would throb in his throat. And the thought of that was appealing, appetizing, stirring a great thirst in her. A thirst she would satisfy now and always.

For she would be for always. She knew and accepted that. Eternal night existence. With her love intact in her heart and by her side.

She squeezed the icy hand holding hers and smiled up at Barnabas, the pale, watery starlight reflecting in flashing winks off her fangs.


End file.
